Bordeaux 2010 Primeurs: The Superstars
Their photo-opportunity over, the tasting superstars melted away, rather like the midpalate tannins in a good vintage of Château Ausone. And speaking of Ausone, perhaps we should now turn our attention away from the greatest wine-hack super-group ever to be assembled, and look to the wines themselves, and in particular the barrel samples that I found to be the most striking during the primeurs tastings.
Top Ten lists inevitably feel elitist. They tend to feature unaffordable first growths and right bank superstars with alarming frequency, wines which today are perhaps more likely to be bought as investment than as a beverage. They are certainly open to ridicule, which was really my feeling when opening this article with my tongue-in-cheek introduction above. All the same, such lists can be worthwhile. They show which wines (or rather, embryonic barrel samples) have over-performed, forcing their way to the top, as well as absent first growths which have not quite matched their peers in terms of absolute quality. With that in mind here, in order of preference, are my top wines from the 2010 vintage. And as usual my top ten is actually twelve (one bottle each to make up a case, naturally). Well, why not?
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